“Well, right now everything is a surprise in the sense that every school does it differently, so it’s fun to bring a whole new perspective in and marry that with all of the things that the Scarlet Knights do great and all of the ways we can get better.”

Has it been a case of you conforming more to Rutgers' ways or the other way around?

“It’s both. There’s a whole lot of me learning the Scarlet Knight way, how we operate internally, and there’s a whole lot of `let’s do this differently, let’s figure out how to do it even better.’ It has gone in both directions.”

So the Louisville blueprint of fundraising, improving facilities and winning is the model you will use?

“People forget that happened over time. That happened over 15 years. Louisville did not start by winning a Sugar Bowl, a national championship in basketball, a runner-up finish in women’s basketball and a College World Series (appearance). That’s not where we started. We started in Conference USA. We were Sisters of the Poor.

“At Louisville there was an extraordinary sense of what we had to do. We have to have that same sense of urgency here to enter the Big Ten and to compete. So we are on a shortened time to accomplish what people want us to accomplish. But we also have the strength of the Big Ten to do that.

“I would tend to think that most of our head coaches are beginning to feel a little bit of the Big Ten power when we’re out there recruiting, because now the next generation of student-athletes that come here are Big Ten grads. That’s an enormous asset to have here. So I think that will shorten the time line.

“What happened at Louisville is a fantastic road map for doing right, with class and integrity and growing it over time. You don’t go from paying a coach $500,000 to $3 million in three years.”
Does the move to the Big Ten put more pressure on coaches to produce?

“It’s my experience that coaches feel pressure no matter what situation they’re in. They always feel pressure. There’s always a voice in their head that says `I’m one loss from losing my job.’ Philosophically, I think it’s important to set appropriate expectations for every program.

“We’re not going to say to somebody who has a dilapidated facility and the 20th-place budget in the Big Ten `you’ve got to win the Big Ten.’ So we will always set realistic expectations for our ability to compete.

“If you don’t do that you absolutely put coaches in harm’s way. That was one thing we very much took our time about at Louisville. We didn’t say to the volleyball coach `you’ve got to win the national title in your third year.’ You’re growing that with your coaches as part of a strategic plan.”

Why did you finally leave Louisville after 16 years – after originally saying in 2011 that you were not interested in being a candidate for an athletic director’s job at another school?

“If I remember correctly, I think I said I wasn’t interested in being a candidate (for another job). And by that I meant I had such an extraordinary opportunity and job for (Louisville athletic director) Tom Jurich. I was going to be absolutely select about a position that I was actually interested in leaving for.

“So I wasn’t somebody who was going to apply just to see where the chips fell. It needed to be a job where I felt the institution was legitimately interested and open to the idea of hiring a woman. Because we all say that. We also say we want to support diversity and we all say it’s a wide-open search. But these are tough jobs regardless of gender. So I needed to know that Rutgers was legitimately a wide-open search and, if so, then I was looking to be a candidate. What I said (in a 2011 story) is I’m not interested in just being a candidate. By that I meant that I want a legitimate opportunity to compete.”

How much are you aware of the added scrutiny as one of just four female ADs at a BCS football school?

“As soon as I walked off the dais at my (introductory) press conference Tom Jurich called and said 'put your blinders on.’ I think that’s a gender neutral statement by Tom. He didn’t just say it to me because I’m a woman. He said it to me because I’m now in a job that has so much scrutiny, that a lot of people are going to like what you do and a lot of people are not going to like what you do.

“I don’t think that was specifically geared to a woman. And I might be scrutinized through a tougher lens because I’m a woman. But it can’t change how I operate. This is an incredible opportunity for me.”
How did you handle the controversy and criticism that preceded you starting on the job?

“I think basically the first month I was burned by fire. So after that there’s nothing to do but focus on what’s best for Rutgers. I watched an amazing man (Jurich) who functioned with nothing but class and integrity all of his life as an AD. That’s what I model myself after. I watched him take bullet after bullet after bullet. So I feel I know exactly what it means to be a stand-up administrator. And it’s my turn to be that.”

Are you surprised with the way you handled it?

“I know what class and integrity look like. That’s how I want to handle things. And the scrutiny has been high. It always has been. But it’s my time. I’ve been so well-coached, so well-mentored, I feel ready for it. It’s not fun. But I feel ready.”

How is fundraising for the improvements to the RAC going?

“I’m really excited about finalizing a strategic plan for all of our facility developments. There are a few things in the hopper, starting with the RAC. As a staff we huddled up this morning and we’ll continue to huddle up in the coming week so that we’re most certain that we’re on the same page about what is the best, smartest that we can do so that our donors are interested in supporting us as fast as we can possibly do it.”

What facility upgrades are the priority?

“I’m still getting up to speed on what needs to be done, what’s in the hopper and what the funding model is. But in terms of the strategic plans for all of that, that’s the next couple of weeks of dialogues of timelines.”

Have you spoken yet with women’s basketball coach Vivian Stringer, who has one year left on her contract?

“Coach and I have had conversations about getting ready for this year and what it looks like and I look forward to more conversations.”

Anything specific about her contract situation?

“We’ve had some conversations about that and we’re looking forward to more conversations about it.”

Where do the non-revenue sports fit into you planning?

“The first priority is to do as much as we can for as many student-athletes as fast as we can. There are pieces of the RAC development that include that. But before we go too quickly down that path we want to quickly assess how many student-athletes will possibly be affected by that build.”

How have you found the adjustment to New Jersey to be?

“The farmer (Hermann is from Nebraska) hits the Garden State. Wherever I have been in athletics my hair has been on fire. So the pace is always rapid fire. I love the frankness. I do. I would rather people be direct. And as I have been dealing with people they’ve been awesome. I don’t have to wonder what they’re thinking, which is great because you can really make a connection.

“My perception of New Jersey has always been `wait and see. We’ll see if we like you.’ But once you’re in, you’re in. My job is to prove myself and then hopefully be in.”

There was some discrepancy about the protest letters written by your former volleyball players at Tennessee in 1996 and your reaction to it. At first you said you didn’t remember the letter, then later said you grew from that experience. Can you explain that?

“When I was first asked that I responded `I’ve never seen a letter, never heard of a letter.’ My boss (at Tennessee) had never seen, never heard, of a letter. Period.

“There were things going on with that team that were very challenging for them and any coach experiencing that. The challenges of the issues from that team is what I learned from. I learned from having a team that had so many things going on, as this particular team did, that what’s important is for me to build a best-in-class system at Louisville.

“One of my primary focuses became creating a best-in-class student-athlete system where kids, no matter what’s going on for them, have a subject matter expert around who can help manage that issue. Because if you don’t do that then coaches are helping to manage it and you end up in some very difficult situations. And that’s the difficult situation I was talking about that I learned from.”

Why did you leave coaching to get into administration and fundraising at such a young age?

“I love coaching. My boss at Tennessee, for two or three years prior to that, said `I’d love to see you go into fundraising.’ I was like `I’m coaching.’ So I never considered administration. A lot of people tried to loop me into administration for years, feeling I had administrative perceptions. I saw myself as all coach.

“I think in my case, although I saw myself as a volleyball coach, almost every boss I worked for saw me having the same administrative potential. When I was at Georgia the folks at Georgia said `you should go into administration.’ I just said `hush.’ When I got to Tennessee (athletic director Joan Cronan) said `You’d be a great administrator. I want you to go into fundraising. I was still saying no. When I was hired for the national (volleyball) team, part of why they were interested in me is they saw me as being a coach/fundraiser. While I had not seen myself as an administrator people around me always saw me as having an administrative mindset.

“Then Tom Jurich called me to be an administrator. I initially said no. I didn’t know if I was there or not. But when I sat down with Tom Jurich he said `here’s what you can do beyond coaching. You can do what you do in coaching for 700 kids. That was my inspiration.”